Nestlé Waters – Vergèze, France
How EcoStruxure™ for Food & Beverage improves the traceability of cleaning and production processes.
Preserving the natural purity
Nestlé Waters is the world leader in bottled water. One of the company’s iconic sparkling water brands is Perrier, manufactured at the Vergèze factory in the south of France. The region with the famous, naturally carbonated source springs is also known for its biodiversity and well-preserved environment.
The Vergèze plant has 13 production lines and an installation comprising several hundred meters of pipes. To ensure the high quality of Perrier water, Nestlé Waters needed a clean-in-place (CIP) process that meets best-in-class standards. Traditional cleaning performed during a period of machine shutdown represented 20% of the working time of the facility and impacted operational efficiency.
Nestlé Waters was looking for a solution that would help them win back some time for production while maintaining product quality and compliance with food safety regulations.
Sustainability in place
“Cleaning is one of the biggest challenges in our industry. Schneider Electric worked closely with us on the continuous improvement of clean-in-place processes,” said Bernard Florès, Manager of the Industrial Process Department, Nestlé Waters Vergèze plant. Schneider’s EcoStruxure Clean-In-Place Advisor enabled comprehensive monitoring of cleaning operations at the Vergèze facility. Tracking and fine-tuning of cleaning cycles significantly reduced water losses, the use of chemicals, and energy consumption. Detecting and fixing valve issues helped to save 340 t of CO2, i.e. 50% less than average, on some production lines in the first year. The flexibility of EcoStruxure CIP Advisor allowed integration and synergies with features of WonderWare, a software already used by Nestlé Waters. This resulted in a transparent view of CIP process data and analytics. “With our machines running on this software, we can check if cleaning is done correctly, simplify diagnostics, generate detailed information on cleaning cycles, and create operational reports,” explained Bernard Florès.
Towards an eco-responsible future
Implementing EcoStruxure Clean-In-Place Advisor at the Vergèze plant brought impressive results. “Thanks to EcoStruxure, the time needed for analysis, and therefore repairs, is considerably reduced. We’re now able to save up to 20% downtime on our production lines,” said Bernard Florès. Other benefits include energy savings and lowered operating costs.
The traceability of the clean-in-place process is now simplified, compliance with food safety regulations ensured, and ecological standards respected.
“Our excellent collaboration with Schneider Electric enabled us to introduce eco-responsible solutions. And prepared us to implement the standards of tomorrow,” summarized Florès.
Encouraged by the results achieved so far, Nestlé Waters aims to replicate the same clean-in-place process at other sites with similar challenges.
